3.1.3 Linguistic Adaptation Theory
In contrast to the Anglo-American tradition of pragmatics, Verschueren(1999, p. 10) takes a perspective view and regards pragmatics as “the linguistics of language use.”[1] He puts forward the Linguistic Adaptation Theory, whose main content can be summarized as one basic claim, three key notions and four angles/tasks of pragmatic investigation. Starting from the one basic claim, the following sections will introduce them one by one and finally focus on the contextual correlates of adaptability.
One basic claim and three key notions
Verschueren (1999, pp. 55-56) makes the basic claim that “using language must consist of the continuous making of linguistic choices,consciously or unconsciously, for language-internal (i.e. structural) and/or language-external reasons.”
Making choices is thus the fundamental nature of linguistic communication. The choices can be made at various levels of linguistic form,ranging from phonetic/phonological, morphological, lexical to syntactic and discoursal. At the same time, strategies are also chosen in verbal communication. For instance, to choose a strategy of solidarity may require speakers to make specific choices on a wide range of structural levels such as language, discourse style, terms of address, and so on. To choose strategies also aims to achieve communicative goals.
In addition, making choices involves various degrees of consciousness:some choices are made very consciously, while others are made automatically.Moreover, both utterance production and interpretation involve choice-making. Speakers choose appropriate linguistic forms and strategies to communicate their intentions, and, at the other end, hearers need to make choices from a number of possible interpretations.
Once linguistic communication starts, speakers are “under an obligation to make choices, no matter whether the range of possibilities can fully satisfy the communicative needs of the moment” (Verschueren, 1999, p. 57).However, choices are not made equivalently. Some are more preferred than others in certain contexts. When choices are made in linguistic communication,their alternatives will be evoked.
With three hierarchically related notions, Verschueren (1999) describes the various but fundamental characteristics of choice-making in linguistic communication, namely variability, negotiability and adaptability.
Variability is “the property of language which defines the range of possibilities from which choices can be made” (ibid., p. 59). The notion of variability emphasizes the richness of linguistic resources, which can properly convey the communicators’ intentions and fully satisfy various communicative needs.
Negotiability refers to “the property of language responsible for the fact that choices are not made mechanically or according to strict rules or fixed form-function relationships, but rather on the basis of highly flexible principles and strategies” (ibid.). The notion of negotiability implies indeterminacy in the choice-making on both sides of language producers and interpreters. It also indicates that even if choices have been made, they can be renegotiated in terms of various flexible strategies in ongoing communication. In other words, negotiability “makes the processes involved in language use highly dynamic” (Verschueren, 2008, p. 17).
Adaptability is “the property of language which enables human beings to make negotiable linguistic choices from a variable range of possibilities in such a way as to approach points of satisfaction for communicative needs”(Verschueren, 1999, p. 61). The notion of adaptability covers what is involved in variability and negotiability and is therefore the higher-order notion among the three. On the other hand, variability and negotiability provide specific contents for adaptability, and therefore make adaptability enriched and possible. These three notions are inseparable, and it is when they work together that a full picture of linguistic pragmatics can be drawn.
To make these notions more workable, Chen (2004b, p. 34) makes some development by pointing out that adaptability of language can be understood as comprising three aspects, namely functionality, variability and negotiability and their relationship is demonstrated by Figure 3.2.
Figure 3.2 Aspects of adaptability (Chen, 2004b, p. 34)
Functionality is a newly-added element that points to the fact that“language functions to satisfy users’ communicative needs” (Chen, 2004b, p.34). Variability means that “there must be a range of linguistic resources or structuring available to language users for choice to satisfy the need of adaptation” (ibid.). Negotiability refers to the fact that “the choices of linguistic forms and meaning as well as their effects should be negotiable”(ibid.) and context is also negotiable.
This revised framework makes the functionality of language use more salient and gives it the same status with variability and negotiability, thus adding a very important dimension for analyzing the adaptability of language.It can provide implications for the present study to establish an analytical framework of identity construction (See Section 3.2). To be specific,variability of identity construction can be made more specific as variability of identity and variability of linguistic choices for constructing identities.Functionality refers to the fact that identity construction can be a means of satisfying communicative needs. Negotiability relates to the dynamic construction of identity and various contextual correlates to be adapted to in identity construction.
Four angles of pragmatic investigation
Starting from adaptability, the higher-order notion, Verschueren (1999)claims that an adequate pragmatic description and interpretation of language use can be achieved through the investigation from four angles. They are the contextual correlates of adaptability, the structural objects of adaptability,the dynamics of adaptability, and the salience of the adaptation process.
The contextual correlates of adaptability include all the ingredients of the communicative context with which linguistic choices must be interadaptable, thus covering a wide range of aspects from physical surroundings to social relationships between participants and their states of mind. A detailed look at the contextual correlates of adaptability will be presented individually in the last part of Section 3.1.3.
The structural objects of adaptability include any possible level of linguistic structure and any principle of presenting various linguistic structures as well. Choice-making in linguistic communication takes place at all possible levels of linguistic structure, ranging from the general selection of language,code and style to the specific choices of all utterance-building ingredients, for instance, sound structure, morphemes and words, clauses and sentences,propositions and suprasentential units. Moreover, the choices occurring at all these levels are highly interdependent.
The dynamics of adaptability refers to the “unfolding of adaptive processes in interaction” (Verschueren, 1999, p. 69). Verschueren (2008, p. 17)claims that “the communicative dynamics consists of movement through consecutive and/or overlapping contexts and alternating focus on different levels of structure.” Accounting for the dynamics of meaning generation is the central task of a pragmatic analysis and this can be done by making use of the context-related and structure-related tools. In other words, the dynamics of adaptability is located in the contextual correlates and the structural correlates of adaptability. It involves how interlocutors conduct the ongoing process of making and negotiating of choices in both discourse production and interpretation.
The salience of the adaptation processes is concerned with the various degrees of consciousness in the process of linguistic choice-making. It is related to the participants’ metapragmatic awareness, “the reflexive awareness of the linguistic choice-making process” (Verschueren, 1999, p.199). The metapragmatic awareness can be indicated by various types of linguistic forms, for example, so-called shifters (including personal pronouns and other deictic expressions, aspects, tense, mood, modality and evidentials),pragmatic markers of various kinds, and contextualization cues such as prosodic markers, code switching or back channel cues. The indicators of pragmatic awareness cover various levels of linguistic form from lexical to syntactic and finally discoursal. For example, at lexical level, some sentence adverbs can be included such as “admittedly,” “unfortunately” and “frankly;”at phrasal level, some hedges can be included such as “sort/kind of,” “in a sense,” and “a little bit;” and at syntactic level, some so-called discourse markers can be included such as “I think,” “you know,” and “you’d better.”The indicators of pragmatic awareness also include question tags like “did he?” and “you see?” and reported speech as well.
The four angles/tasks have their own functions to perform within and contribute in a complementary way to the overall framework of the pragmatic perspective on language use. Figure 3.3 shows their status and their interrelationships within the structure of a pragmatic theory, illustrating Verschueren’s (1999, p. 69) claim that “the general concern for the study of linguistic pragmatics is to understand the meaningful functioning of language as a dynamic process operating on context-structure relationships at various levels of salience.”
Figure 3.3 The structure of a pragmatic theory (Verschueren, 1999, p. 67)
However, Chen (2010) points out that treating the linguistic choice-making as the mapping between structure and context may cause misunderstanding. He argues that what correspond to the linguistic structures should be their functions. However, the linguistic structures do not necessarily map their functions exactly. Due to the differences in socio-cultural and cognitive factors, the same linguistic structure can be chosen to perform different functions and at the same time, the same function can be performed by different linguistic structures. Accordingly, what needs to be examined is the mapping between structure and function in context, rather than the mapping between structure and context. Based on these ideas, Chen (2010)slightly revises the structure of a pragmatic theory, as shown in Figure 3.4.
The revised framework makes salient the role of function at “locus” and the role of context in the matching between linguistic structure and content and their functions. Another difference between the structure of a pragmatic theory proposed by Verschueren (1999, p. 67) and the revised one by Chen(2010) is that the “structure” is specified as “structure” and “content,” thus assigning equal status to the role of linguistic forms and their contents because the choices are made not only at the level of linguistic forms, but also at the level of propositional contents conveyed by linguistic forms.
Figure 3.4 The structure of a pragmatic theory (Revised from Verschueren (1999, p. 67) by Chen (2010, p. 20))
The revised version is therefore more explicit and complete. It can provide some implications for the present study to establish an analytical framework of identity construction (see Section 3.2). To be specific, identity construction can be realized by making linguistic choices at different levels and be adaptive to various contextual correlates to satisfy communicative needs.
Contextual correlates of adaptability
According to Verschueren (2008, p. 19), “any (combination of)ingredient(s) of a communicative event, along any (set of) parameter(s) of variability, with which linguistic choices are interadaptable, constitutes (a)contextual correlate(s) of adaptability.” This section will discuss various ingredients of the contextual correlates proposed by Verschueren (1999, pp.75-114). The contextual correlates in general can be divided into the ingredients of the communicative context and linguistic context. The focus of the communicative context is language users, the utterer (U) and the interpreter (I). Utterers may have many voices such as virtual utterer and embedded utterer, while interpreters may have many roles such as addressee,side participants, bystanders, and overhearers. Moreover, in the ongoing process of linguistic communication, the utterer can also become the interpreter.
In the linguistic choice-making process, various aspects of physical,
social and mental reality will be activated by both the utterer and the interpreter and thus become part of the language use.
Firstly, any utterance production and interpretation must adapt to the mental world of the utterer and the interpreter, since “verbal communication is no doubt communication from mind to mind” (Verschueren, 1999, p. 87).The aspects of the mental world which will trigger the linguistic choices include personality, emotions, beliefs, desires and wishes, motivations and intentions. An utterance is produced on the basis of the utterer’s judgments of the interpreter’s personality traits, emotional involvement, beliefs, wishes and desires, and motivations and intentions. However, it is impossible to take all these aspects into consideration in one real communication. More weight will be put on some of them and these will be easier to access than others. For example, in performing a face-threatening speech act, the wish to save face of interlocutors will be carefully considered. This explains why mitigations are often used when a face-threatening speech act is performed. The utterer first assesses the mental state of the interpreter in this respect and then makes an appropriate linguistic choice to perform this face-threatening speech act.
Secondly, verbal interaction does not happen in a vacuum but always takes place in certain socio-cultural settings. Therefore, the linguistic choice-making has to adapt to the social world of the utterer and the interpreter. The adaptability of language to the social world seems pervasive.Various social dimensions with which linguistic choice-making is interadaptable include attitudinal deixis, social settings or institutions,cultural norms and values, social identities, social class, ethnicity and race,nationality, linguistic group, religion, age, level of education, profession,kinship, gender, and sexual preference. However, the accessibility of these factors to interlocutors is different and the salience of these factors is also different in different interactions. For example, the linguistic choices made by the members of the committee in a PhD dissertation defence must be interadaptable to the norms of this community of practice, social distance and power relation between the members of the committee and the PhD candidate.In an institutional interaction, the social context is generally asymmetrical(DeCapua & Dunham, 1993; Hutchby, 1995; Pudlinski, 2005), which constrains what linguistic choices are made.
Thirdly, as verbal interaction also takes place in certain physical settings,for instance, at a restaurant, at a book store, and in a classroom, the factors in the physical world also play a role in interaction to constrain the interlocutors’ linguistic choice-making. The physical world in general includes such aspects as temporal deixis and spatial deixis, which are the most visible ways to anchor language choices into a physical world. The physical world also includes physical factors related to the utterer and the interpreter such as bodily postures, gestures, gaze, physical appearance, physical conditions and even biological properties.
However, just as various factors in these three worlds in real communication have the unequal degrees of salience, these three worlds, in a strict sense, also compete with each other in the process of linguistic choice-making. One or more of the factors from one world may become the most salient in an actual interaction. As Verschueren (1999, p. 109) points out,“though in principle every possible ingredient of a speech event can show up as a contextually relevant element to be taken into account, not all those ingredients are relevantly mobilized on every occasion.” The utterance produced by the speaker is therefore a balance of linguistic forms and various strategies (e.g. pragmatic strategies and discourse organizational strategies),in line with the adaptation to various contextual correlates (Chen, 2004a).Moreover, it should be noted that the boundaries of the three worlds are not clear-cut.
In addition, both the linguistic channels chosen for communication and linguistic context are also a part of the contextual objects of adaptability.Linguistic channels of communication are in general spoken, written or hybrid forms of spoken and written. In the present study, the linguistic channel is spoken. Linguistic context refers to those aspects of linguistic choice-making itself such as contextual cohesion, intertextuality and sequencing.
The various aspects of the contextual correlates of adaptability and their interrelationship are summarized in Figure 3.5.
Furthermore, these contextual correlates are not pre-existing and fixed;rather they are generated in the dynamic process of language use and both the utterer and the interpreter dynamically manipulate various contextual correlates in their communication (He & Yu, 1999; He, et al., 2007;Verschueren, 1999, 2008). It is these various aspects of interrelated contextual correlates and their dynamic generative characteristics that provide an adequate interpretation for the motivations of linguistic choice-making.
Figure 3.5 Contextual correlates of adaptability (Verschueren, 1999, p. 76)
To sum up, the Linguistic Adaptation Theory can provide an adequate pragmatic description and interpretation of any linguistic phenomenon by proposing the claim that using language is an ongoing process of making choices, employing three interrelated key notions concerning language properties (i.e. variability, negotiability and adaptability) and investigating linguistic communication from four interdependent angles.
It is presumed here that the Linguistic Adaptation Theory can also provide an adequate pragmatic description and interpretation of identity construction in verbal communication because identity construction is one of the activities involved in language use (Tracy, 2002). In addition, identity construction is in essence a dynamic process of choice-making. In the next section, a theoretical framework for the present study will be established on the basis of the Linguistic Adaptation Theory and the previous discussions on identity and identity construction.